Are Fertility Drugs a Cancer Risk?

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Fertility medications appear to increase the development of uterine cancer, as well as some other forms of disease. Drugs used to stimulate ovulation have been used for quite some time to help women conceive children, but the drugs’ impact on the overall health of patients has never been clarified.

Original studies conducted in response to this issue were inconclusive and led to few, if any, concrete findings. Whether these medicines actually contributed to a rise in ovarian or breast cancer has been hidden since these medicines came into existence many years ago.

The recently completed study by Ronit Calderon-Margalit at Hadassah-Hebrew University in Jerusalem compared the cancer rates of 15,000 Israeli women 30 years after they had given birth to their children. Of those involved in the study, 567 reported using ovulation-inducing drugs. Among these 567 individuals, five developed uterine cancer. This rate was three times higher than those who had not used those medications. For those women who took the drug clomiphene, an estrogen-blocking pharmaceutical, the risk was more than four times that of a drug-free woman.

Fertility-drug takers were also noted as having a slightly higher risk of contracting breast cancer, malignant melanoma (skin cancer), and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. While the risk was not as significant as previous information on uterine cancer, it was nonetheless revelatory. Surprisingly, none of these women saw an increase in their risk of ovarian cancer.

Although this study involved 15,000 women, many researchers are saying that drawing conclusions from a pool of this size is not possible. The number of women who took the fertility drugs is not substantial enough to base an accurate foundation for an answer to this question.

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